Portfolio

Below is a collection of projects, as well as work experience.

Corpus Based Scrabble

Scottish Gaelic FST

Photo Editing

Other Sites

Science Gallery

Trinity College Dublin

Old Anatomy Department

Trinity College Dublin

Education

A timeline of the past decade of my life. (Click on pictures for more info)

2005-2011

Oatlands College

Attended Oatlands College in Stillorgan for my Secondary School education. An amazing experience which culminated in a score of 475 points across the top 6 of 10 subjects studied for the Leaving Certificate.

September 2011

Entered Trinity College Dublin

Began my study of Computer Science, Linguistics and Modern Irish in Trinity College Dublin, having received an offer to study the course which was my first choice on the CAO form.

September 2013

Erasmus in Glasgow begins

Spent a year in the University of Glasgow on Erasmus, recreating my degree field over there along with Scottish Gaelic, as well as learning fundamental life skills from living away from home.

December 2015

Graduated from Trinity College Dublin

Graduated with a 2.1 Honours Degree from Trinity College Dublin in Computer Science, Linguistics and Modern Irish. Time to experience the real world!!

References

Feel free to contact any of references below in regard to my abilities.

Corpus Based Scrabble

Final Year Project 2015

For my final year project, I created a functioning corpus based scrabble application. An application where the user (or player) could choose to either play Scrabble in English, Irish or any language they wanted so long as they had a corpus text file of that language. The application would take such a corpus, redistribute the values associated with letters and the frequency with which they occur in the game, and use the corpus as the dictionary in the game stored as a Trie data structure. I received a First Class Honours for this project.

Gaelic Verb Morphological Analyser

Erasmus Dissertation 2014

For my Erasmus Dissertation I designed and implemented a morphological transducer for the verbs in Scottish Gaelic using the Xerox Finite State Tool, XFST. I used several FSAs, or finite state automatons to model the morphotactic rules, such as the one below:

I received a First Class Honours for this dissertation and the report, which contains the code in it's appendix, is viewable here.

Photo Editing

A collection of my creations using GIMP and Photoshop

I have always been interested in the creative side of computers alongside the coding side of things, so it made sense that something like Photoshop would appeal to me. I learned this skill through self learning and initiative, often creating gifts for friends, like the portrait above which I made for a friend's birthday. It started with GIMP, GNU Image Manipulation Program, which I came into contact with in the Linux labs of Trinity. I messed around with this during my spare time over the years and eventually was able to edit photos at a decent level, the result of which can be seen throughout this site.

Being creative and exploring that aspect of myself has always been important to me, as evidenced by taking art for the Leaving Certificate when it could only be done after school outside of school hours. I therefore also tried out Photoshop, and this section is just a little showcase of some of my works, I hope you enjoy.

The above image is my first attempt at the double exposure effect, I followed several youtube tutorials in order to learn how to do it, and I used Tupac Shakur as the central character, having a quote from him at the top which resonated with me at the time.

I had been influenced by various minimalist artists I had seen at the time to try and replicate their effect by removing all facial features except for hair of myself and a few friends to see what the outcome would be like.

The above piece was just a throw away joke image that I made in 20 minutes or so, and is more representative of the type of images I make. I usually make edit an image together when someone mentions something and an idea comes together which I find funny and I then try and make that idea a reality in an image, this has led to some wonderful creations and improved my ability with photo editing immensely.

Other Sites

Here is a collection of other sites I have created

Since graduating, I have started to learn web development on Lynda.com, as it is an area I was interested in but did not get an opportunity to study at University. I have already been approached and made some small websites for friends, and intend to continue making little websites of my own to improve my skills. I shall link these websites to this section

In April 2016 I created a small website to assist a friend in one of their projects. The website was not integral to the project but was used to add flair to it. It was for an imaginary business venture that they had to make up. It can be seen here.

Science Gallery

A reflection of my time in the Science Gallery

I developed excellent interpersonal and communication skills as a SGD mediator, conveying complex scientific concepts to general public in an interdisciplinary space through tours and one on one interactions. I delivered hands-on technical workshops in soldering and electronics for adults and children at Science Gallery's MakeShop.I had to be a flexible and responsive team-player working in dynamic environments to facilitate diverse events in the Science Gallery and off site, for example TED X Dublin.

Below you can find a list of all of the exhibitions I worked at during my time in the Gallery, each of which is also a link to a short YouTube video explaining the theme of that exhibition:

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Science Gallery, and can't thank the other staff members enough for all they taught me.

Old Anatomy Department

My time in the old anatomy department

I worked in the Old Anatomy Department of Trinity College for 10 weeks over the Summer of 2014. In these weeks I cleaned, organised and catalogued many items which hadn't been moved in decades. I cleaned and organised the Museum building, I catalogued and cleaned over 200 historical sketches found underneath the Lecture Hall Theatre. I was given keys to the department and had to clear out old lecturer's and professor's rooms

Through my work in the Anatomy Department I learned the value of correctly cataloguing and storing specimens. I had to show respect to the premises and specimens I was dealing with. I learned a lot about the human body during my time working, and thoroughly appreciate it.

Oatlands College

Secondary School, 2005 - 2011

Had a wonderful six years studying at Oatlands Secondary School. With a very active transition year programme, with activities ranging from sailing to snooker, dance to gym, driving to public speaking, and a Musical with the local girls school Sion Hill.

It was in transition year that I first considered studying Computer Science, I spent a week of the work experience programme in the GV2 lab under Dr. John Dingliana in Trinity College Dublin. In this week I learned a lot about Computer Science as a subject, as well as gaining some experience working on web development and 3D modelling. After this week I knew this would be an area I would like to explore, and when I found out that the CAO points for the CS course in Trinity were lower than I expected, I decided that I would do all of the subjects that I wanted to do for the Leaving Certificate, which is how I ended up doing 10.

One of the extra subjects I chose to study for the Leaving Certificate was LCVP (The Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme) which had another week of work experience as part of its curriculum, I decided to do this in the same lab as I had the previous year but with new questions. This time I wanted to see if there were any other CS related courses that might suit me so that I could explore other interests at the same time, and this is how I was introduced to the course I would eventually do, CSLL - Computer Science, Linguistics and Irish, and with the help of contacts I had already made in Trinity, I was able to set up a day of shadowing the student in first year of that course, where I was able to speak to lecturers from the course which solidified it as my first choice on the CAO.

Although this course had high points on the CAO, it rarely had all of its 5 positions taken up, and therefore meeting the requirements for the course were more important than your points, so I was able to continue studying the 10 subjects I had chosen for the leaving cert, the result of which can be seen below:

Various achievements gained throughout my time in Oatlands include being named "Transition Year Student of the Year", playing a pivotal role in The Windchasers, a film made for our art class in fifth year which went on to win the Leinster Fresh Film Festival Award, being elected as the Student Council President and receiving the theology award in 6th Year.

Trinity College Dublin

Computer Science, Linguistics and Irish

The course that I studied at Trinity comprised of three main areas, Computer Science, Linguistics and Irish, as well as where these three disciplines intersected - computational linguistics. I studied core CS modules alongside CS students, core linguistic modules alongside students from various degrees, grammar and oral modules in Irish with students studying Irish, as well as a few modules in computational linguistics that were just for students of our course. The breakdown of the modules I studied while at Trinity College can be seen below:

First Year:

Mathematics (CS1003)

Introduction to Programming (CS1010)

Introduction to Computing (CS1021)

Representations and Computation (CS1LL2)

Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar (DCLRS) (CSLL00)

Language, The Individual and Society (LI1008)

Introduction to Syntax (LI1031)

Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (LI1230)

Ceart agus labhairt na teanga (1st Year) (IR1035)

Pobal agus teanga (IR1022)

Second Year:

Discrete Mathematics (MA2C03)

Algorithms and Data Structures (CS2010)

Intermediate Programming and Natural Language Processing (CS2LL3)

Syntax and Semantics (LI2034)

Speech Science and Phonetics (LI2035)

Computational Morphology and Statistics (LI2036)

Ceart agus labhairt na teanga (2nd Year) (IR2035)

Gaidhligh (2nd Year) (IR2026)

Fourth Year:

Information Management (CS4LL1)

Artificial Intelligence II (CS4LL4)

Speech Analysis and Synthesis (LI4031)

Computational Linguistics (LI4032)

Ranganna teagaisc (IR4021)

Gaidhlig (4th Year) (IR4013)

Second Language Acquisition (LI4034)

The Societies that I was most active in in Trinity were the Vincent DePaul Society (VDP) and An Cumann Gaelach (The Irish Society). With the VDP I performed in a panto for underprivileged inner city children, as well as homework and drama clubs. I received the Deans Roll of Honour in my second year for my volunteering work with the VDP.

University of Glasgow

September 2014 - June 2014

I spent my Erasmus year in the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where I attempted to replicate my degree modules alongside learning Scots Gaelic. A breakdown of the modules I studies in Glasgow can be seen here:

Artificial Intelligence 4

Advanced Programming 3

Software Engineering M3

Statistics 2R

Gaelic 1B

Language Policy and Planning Scotland

Alongside these modules I also completed a dissertation for credits while on Erasmus. This dissertation was titled “Implementing a morphological analyser for Scottish Gaelic verbs using a Finite State Transducer" and a detailed description of it can be found in the Portfolio section of my online resume.

Glasgow University also has many societies for the students to join, and the three societies that I was most active in were the Student Television Society (GUST), the Pole Dancing Club and An Comunn Oiseanach (The Gaelic Society).

In the Student Television society I performed several roles including actor, cameraman, reporter and anchorman. The work that I was involved with which made it to publication can be seen here. Towards the end of the year I also had to perform on stage with the Pole Dancing club in their annual show, which helped a lot with confidence building. And by the end of the year I was well experienced with the Scottish Ceilidh dances from all of the societie's events.

Graduation Day

2nd of December 2015

I graduated from Trinity College Dublin on the 2nd of December 2015 with a 2.1 Honours Degree in Computer Science, Linguistics and Modern Irish. I received the same overall result in each year of my degree, generally receiving firsts in the CS subjects, 2.1s in linguistics and 2.2s in Irish.

I had an amazing day and it was an honour and a privilege to have had such wonderful people studying in the course alongside me.